


In My Blood I Felt Bubbles Burst

by BlueMoon0nTheRise



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale can't resist doing good, Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Car Accidents, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Devil's Dyke, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Violence, Established Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Mild Smut, Not between Aziraphale and Crowley, Serious Injuries, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23110462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoon0nTheRise/pseuds/BlueMoon0nTheRise
Summary: An indeterminate length of time after the not-quite-Apocalypse, Aziraphale and Crowley are happily settled in Devil's Dyke in the South Downs. Life is good. They drive around in the Bentley, drink wine and enjoy their freedom together. They'd be just like any other angel-demon couple who once saved the world if Aziraphale wasn't so determined to do good all the damn time. But he is, and now they're practically the occult emergency services: scraping the unfortunate off the road and wreaking havoc on the lives of those who put them there.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	1. The cat at the start of it all

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no idea how long this is going to be, and I'm ok with that. This bizarre little idea popped into my head and demanded to be written. I hope to write many chapters, some of which may not even have car accidents in. However, this one does, and includes injury detail pretty much from the start.
> 
> Title is Franz Ferdinand lyrics.

It had started innocently enough.

It was a sunny day in June, and Aziraphale and Crowley, as they were wont to do, were driving through lush green hills, looking for somewhere to spend the day. Aziraphale had spotted a sign for the Breaky Bottom vineyard a few miles back, and was in the process of persuading Crowley to reroute back towards it. Crowley was arguing perfunctorily, but really looking out for a driveway he could turn around in without scratching the Bentley.

Everything was perfectly lovely.

The cat, who was about to have the luckiest day of its entire life, was for now splayed out on the road, half-crushed and bloodied but still noticeably breathing. 

An angel and a demon sped towards it. 

Crowley, scanning the hedgerow for non-existent driveways, was oblivious. But Aziraphale, suddenly, could see it from every angle. 

Even as the speedometer hovered near 100 mph, the vehicle seemed to slow. It was moving through treacle, and the angel was no longer in the car – at least not in spirit. He was crouched beside that little body on the road. 

Now he could see the Bentley speeding towards him, but it was out of focus. Black and white fur matted with gore filled every retina.

The cat was going to die.

Some part of Aziraphale moved instinctively as he knelt, transfixed with horror. The hands that he no longer felt connected to seized the steering wheel and swerved. 

The car should have crashed through the hedgerow, but it didn’t. Branches still lashed against the paint, but it defied momentum and curved, without the assistance of either pair of hands now clutching the steering wheel, and it landed on the road, the other side of the cat, with a horrible crunch.

Aziraphale hadn’t realised they’d been airborne until his human body objected to the impact. The hands that had snatched the wheel now fumbled for the door, now hit the tarmac as he tumbled from the car. His corporation joined his true form beside the poor, mangled creature that mewled for help, and its pitiful cry consumed him. 

Crowley was spewing obscenities about the Bentley, but he didn’t, couldn't hear.

‘Oh you poor thing, you’, he crooned, stroking a hand down the cat’s back.

It meowed again, seeming weaker, but something was happening to it. Its insides, a moment ago strewn onto the road, were being sucked back inside. Its fur knitted back together, and not a minute later it got to its feet, dazed and wobbly. 

Aziraphale smiled.

‘There’, he said. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’

The cat ground its head against his legs in response, and the angel smiled. 

‘Who did this to you?’ he murmured, glowing as the cat continued to weave between his legs, now purring loudly. 

They were still in the middle of the road but, perhaps miraculously, no traffic appeared to disturb them. 

The cat said nothing, because it was a cat.

As it walked more steadily, Aziraphale’s horror plateaued into relief, and he gradually became aware of the seething demon behind him.

‘What?’ he asked, surprised to hear how tetchy he sounded. 

He supposed he was a bit irritated that Crowley was worrying about a car when the darling creature they’d just scraped off the road had nearly lost its life.

‘You’ve – the paint on the driver’s side is _fucked_.’

‘Well you’re still a demon, aren’t you? Fix it.’

He frowned. Really, it was hardly irreparable. Even the humans could have touched it up nicely. And Crowley liked animals. 

Crowley also liked the Bentley though. He’d taken awfully good care of it all these years. Aziraphale felt a little stab of guilt. Logically, he should have simply miracled the car cleanly over the cat and not lunged for the wheel, but it was hard to think of every eventuality in less than a second, even for an angel.

‘Angel, we could have run that cat over another twenty times and you still could have resurrected it.’

‘I’m not a necromancer!’ Aziraphale exclaimed. He cleared his throat. ‘Look, it’s immaterial. The cat and the car can both be saved. What’s the fuss?’

‘I’ll always know all the scratches are there’, Crowley growled. 

But he directed his attention towards the driver’s side and, suddenly, it was like new. He scowled.

Aziraphale didn’t say anything. He was stroking the cat still, although he sensed the animal was ready to go home now, having got over the shock. He sensed Crowley was ready to go home too, and he thought regretfully of the vineyard. 

‘Get in the car, necromancer’, Crowley said, holding open the passenger door.

* * *

They were halfway home when Aziraphale let out the little gasp that would set the whole blessed chain of events in motion. 

They were just passing Falmer on the A27 when it came to him. He wasn’t sure what _it_ was – it wasn’t love, definitely not, but it was a feeling, intoxicating and all-consuming. And then – knowledge. A number plate, a blue door, thinning blonde hair and a grey tie. He stiffened.

‘What?’ Crowley asked. He stepped on the brake, on the off-chance that Aziraphale was going to seize the wheel again and take them up the nearest tree.

‘I know who did this’, the angel said, voice low. ‘Take the next turn.’

Crowley obeyed, bemused, and not ten minutes later they were stood outside a blue front door. A large silver Audi was parked in the driveway, and if Crowley didn’t know better, he would have thought he saw a few chunks of black and white fur in that radiator. 

Aziraphale glared at the car. 

Inside, he could sense the quiet thrum of life. A microwave meal, a pet fish in a bowl. A teenage son sulking upstairs. A football game. An old mate.

‘Remind me what we’re doing here’, Crowley said. His eyes ran over the contours of the house, then flicked back, suspiciously, to the Audi.

‘This man’, Aziraphale said. ‘He did it deliberately.’

‘He –? No, angel. No, you wouldn’t.’

‘This isn’t the first time’, Aziraphale said. ‘Pheasants, foxes, deer, cats… It could be a person next, you know. A child. An old lady.’

There was a soft hissing sound, and the tyres of the Audi started to deflate. 

‘And the punishment for potential murderers is… flat tyres?’

Aziraphale scoffed softly, and started walking back towards the Bentley.

‘I think this gentleman is going to find it rather difficult to ever keep a tyre inflated for more than a few hours’, the angel said primly, a smug smirk playing on his lips. ‘On this car or, indeed, on any other vehicle he may attempt to drive in the future.’

He got into the Bentley, and strapped himself in. Crowley dropped into the driver’s seat, his jaw agape. 

‘I’d imagine’, Aziraphale went on, ‘that he’s going to have to relocate rather soon. A rural location’s hardly ideal. I just hope he doesn’t use a rental removal van.’

Crowley was suddenly having difficulty breathing.

‘Ngh’, he said. ‘I–‘

Aziraphale smiled again, and wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

‘Let’s go home, dear’, he said.

They did. 

Crowley spent the evening breathlessly admiring his avenging angel as he hummed and drank cocoa and read his book, and when they went upstairs to bed he curled himself into Aziraphale’s flesh and hissed admiration into his ear until the sun rose again.


	2. Why’s she so afraid of you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for mention of domestic abuse. Nothing specific, but it's there. Not related to Aziraphale and Crowley, of course. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit longer, and a bit darker. I like it.

They were enjoying a long, lazy breakfast.

Crowley had offered tea as soon as he woke, and Aziraphale, already up and deeply engrossed in a particularly dusty, boring-looking tome, had hummed his approval. 

So they sat and sipped happily in silence for almost ten minutes. Then Crowley got bored, and ‘tea’ turned into distracting, trailing kisses that were swatted away with dwindling conviction. That had then merged into some rather more spirited kissing entwined in Aziraphale’s reading chair, but before things could really get going, Aziraphale remembered rather a lot of chores he had to do that morning, and Crowley had first rolled himself off the angel, and then his eyes skyward.

But the chores were done quickly enough, and although they hadn’t yet returned to the reading chair, tea then turned into fruit and cereal and eggs done five different ways.

They read the papers and bickered about their contents, and more tea was brewed.

By that time it was nearly midday, and neither could think of a better way they could have spent the morning.

Lunchtime loomed, and with the dishes miracled clean and back into their cupboards, the pair meandered into the garden to bask in the warm summer sun.

They had a wicker couch at the end of their plot of land, where Aziraphale liked to read, and Crowley liked to lay across the angel’s lap, Aziraphale’s fingers playing idly with his hair. The sunlight was always dappled there because of the nearby apple tree, and they could look out across the garden – the vegetable patch, the flowers and the multiple fruit trees – and admire their little cottage at the other end. Crowley was currently undertaking a serious landscaping project to introduce layers and, hopefully, a little bubbling stream. Aziraphale hadn’t been sure about the stream – _what if it floods, dear?_ – but Crowley had assured him that he’d done his research, and the matter seemed to be settled. As a result of the project – which he had felt compelled to complete by hand – there was rather a lot more exposed earth visible than usual, halfway-crafted into little mountain ranges and valleys.

‘Are you going to do some more today?’ Aziraphale asked as they settled on the bench. 

He wound his fingers through Crowley’s hair instinctively. The action was barely conscious now – an automatic ritual. Crowley sighed softly under his touch.

‘Hmm’, he said, shifting around on the seat, trying to get comfortable. ‘My Grand Canyon does need work.’

‘Yes, I’d rather it wasn’t quite so much of a canyon, for a start’, Aziraphale admitted, glancing at the large crevice a few metres from where they sat.

‘It’s more of a ravine, really’, Crowley said.

‘I’d like it to be less of a ravine, too.’

The angel disappeared into his book, and Crowley took a moment to appreciate his surroundings. Well – not appreciate, he wouldn’t like to deliberately exude gratitude – more _revel_. He _revelled_ in the warm sun on his skin, the cool fingers in his hair and the intoxicating scent of his angel. The perfect summer’s day.

What would make it more perfect was entertainment. 

He miracled the little radio that they kept in the kitchen to the patch of grass in front of him, so he could operate it without moving and disturbing Aziraphale. Keeping the volume low, he flicked from channel to channel, settling on BBC Radio Sussex. Two callers were having a rather heated debate about pottery, while the presenter desperately tried to get a word in edgeways. Crowley grinned to himself.

The pottery argument was mercifully – for the presenter at least – cut short by the midday news bulletin. Crowley was pretty sure that Tina was about twenty seconds from telling David to shove his sub-standard varnishing methods up his arse, preferably alongside his shitty postmodern pot, but her furious monologue was cut off by the dulcet tones of a newsreader who Crowley swore was trying not to laugh.

Satan, he loved local phone-in radio shows. Definitely one of Hell’s, and damn fine work.

He tuned out as the newsreader gained their composure and began reciting the day’s miseries. War, disease, politics, death… once he’d have scanned the list for something he could take credit for, but unless he heard about a particularly infuriating prank, these days he wasn’t interested. 

He was, therefore, gazing absently at the petals of a nearby daffodil when Aziraphale gasped, and was completely ignorant of the reason for the reaction. The sound jolted him back to reality and he looked up into his angel’s face, now unobstructed by his book.

‘What?’ Crowley asked, somewhat stupidly.

‘Do you think –?’ Aziraphale asked. ‘It’s nearby. It wouldn’t _hurt_.’

Crowley wondered if they might be talking about the vineyard they’d nearly visited a month ago. He had wanted to go, and if it hadn’t been for the damned cat they would have. Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned it again, which was disappointing, but Crowley was loath to remind him of the whole bizarre incident. That must be it.

‘Uh – sure.’

‘You don’t think it’s odd? I know I don’t need permission to do this sort of thing but – I mean, last time it was sort of an accident. This would be deliberate. I’ve not – not since –‘

‘You don’t need to ask me for permission, angel. I wanted to last time too.’

Aziraphale’s face split into a wide smile, and he pushed Crowley from his lap as he got quickly to his feet.

‘Oh, wonderful! Get in the car, I’ll give you directions.’

* * *

There were flashing blue lights and far too many humans in uniform, rushing around and speaking into walkie talkies. There were no grape vines, and there was certainly no wine. Aziraphale’s directions hadn’t even been in the vague direction of the vineyard, and then they’d stopped here. Crowley was beyond confused.

‘Make sure you’re not noticeable’, Aziraphale was telling him, as he yanked him along by the arm, towards the wreckage of twisted metal that Crowley had been trying to avoid looking at.

Getting onto the scene unnoticed was easy. Looking at it was not.

It was horrible. 

There seemed to be three cars involved, and between them they had blocked the entire northbound side of the dual carriageway. At some point, they appeared to have all collided with the central barrier, because the small strip of grass there was littered with mangled metal, and the right side of all of the cars sported a deep welt. But momentum had thrown them back into the centre of the road, and one of the three had flipped onto its roof. The other two seemed melded together.

Firefighters were crowded around the overturned car, cutting away what was left of the body of it to free the people inside. Aziraphale left the humans to that one, and turned his attention instead to the two melded vehicles. He strode towards them purposefully and Crowley, reluctantly, followed.

The angel closed his eyes and extended his senses, reaching out for flickers of life. There seemed to be nothing for a moment. He could sense, inside the little red coupe, a dead man with a crushed skull and a teenage girl without a heartbeat. In the other car though, nothing. Had they already rescued all the surviving passengers? Had no one died in that silver SUV?

He didn’t notice his own tears until he felt Crowley’s fingers wiping them away.

‘There’s a baby’, he breathed.

‘Fuck.’

And in a moment, Aziraphale was gone. He poured through the car window like smoke. His hands reached out together and engulfed the child within, lifted her up, and then he was beside Crowley again, tears pouring silently as he cradled a tiny body in his arms. There was a pulse, but it was weak, and he had never seen such a small body so broken. It would be beyond the humans to fix this. The child would be gone in less than a minute.

For his part, Crowley felt bile rising in his throat. He had to swallow, hard.

The baby was too weak to cry, so Aziraphale’s cried for her. His heart ached as he ran a shaky hand over her tiny body. He knew even his angelic, healing touch would cause further agony, at least in the short term. The baby should be screaming.

Slowly, the little body began to look more right. The bones fused, and although Aziraphale didn’t clean the blood from the child’s clothes or skin, the deep gashes healed too. The angel kissed her forehead and set her down gently on the roof of the ruined car, where she, mercifully, began to scream.

He and Crowley watched as all the humans reacted at once, and a paramedic ran over to examine the little body.

‘What about the other car?’ Crowley asked.

‘Dead’, Aziraphale said. His voice, barely above a whisper, cracked.

‘So?’

‘Crowley, I’m an angel.’

‘Thought you didn’t need permission anymore’, Crowley shot back. He was still feeling nauseas.

Aziraphale didn’t say anything. Crowley could feel the agonising indecision pouring off him in waves.

‘ _Fine_ ’, he said, and a moment later there was stirring within the red car, then choking cries.

‘What did you do?’

‘They were only just gone. Besides, I left them with most of their injuries, which is a site less suspicious than magically healing a baby completely and leaving it on top of a car.’

Aziraphale sighed. He wasn’t angry, not at all. He just had no idea how he was supposed to feel. He’d felt the little flare of life as father and daughter rejoined this world. It was like the half-drowned taking their first breath of air, washed up on a sandy beach. It was love and gratitude in its purest form, and yet it was unnatural. Wrong, supposedly. _Don’t ask questions_.

‘What do you think happened?’ Crowley asked, looking around.

The shouts from the red car had drawn more paramedics, who were organising more stretchers. In the distance, more sirens wailed.

Aziraphale glanced at the tyre marks on the road, the positioning of the three cars, and he felt the glow of the souls around him. He closed his eyes.

The silver car was driving too fast. She was in a rush, whoever she was, but the roads were fairly clear and she weaved in and out of traffic easily, ignoring the blaring horns that followed her. She was going to be late, and _he_ was going to be angry. Her heart was in her mouth, and she accelerated more. It wasn’t that busy.

In the red car, they were arguing. She was _bad news_ , he was saying. He understood that she cared about her a lot, but she’d been getting in trouble with the police, taking things she shouldn’t, and as a parent he couldn’t let her in their house anymore. In the back, his daughter gave as good as she got. He didn’t understand, it wasn’t her _fault_ and, anyway, she _needed_ her or she’d be in worse trouble. And it was a total invasion of her privacy. He shouldn’t even know.

In the third car, a green Mini, Angela and her husband were just going to the shops, listening to the same programme on the radio that Crowley had had on earlier.

It happened very quickly. 

The silver car, out of luck and out of road, smashed into the red one. This killed the teenage daughter immediately, and knocked both drivers unconsciousness. The two now-driverless cars ricocheted off the barrier and spun. 

Around them, everyone else swerved to avoid them. Angela just wasn’t quick enough.

‘So it was the woman in the silver car’, Crowley said.

He looked around, as if she was going to be strolling past, ready for them to trip up.

‘Not quite’, Aziraphale said. ‘She was scared of someone. She was driving like that because it would be worse to be late.’

‘I think the families of everyone else here would disagree’, Crowley said, grinding his teeth.

‘Crowley, _listen_. It would have been worse if she was late.’

They were silent. In the southbound lane cars rushed past, passengers craning to get a good look. In the back of the ambulances there were soft voices and pained sobs. And Angela and her husband were finally freed from their Mini – badly hurt, but alive. 

‘Ah’, Crowley said.

* * *

Back home, Aziraphale went straight on the _computer_ , of all things. He then made Crowley help him set up news alerts for the crash, and sat in the desk chair, staring at his empty inbox.

Crowley sighed. He pulled up a chair beside Aziraphale and wound his arms around him. He leant his head on the angel’s shoulder, and waited with him. He wanted to tell him that they’d done all they could, that it was much better, if they were going to make a habit of attending car crashes, that they stuck to healing. He wanted to remind him – gently, lovingly – that revenge, however righteous, could spiral out of control, because that was how it was designed. He didn’t want to see his angel saunter vaguely downwards like he had, paving the road to his own destruction with good intentions.

But he’d seen the look on Aziraphale’s face. He knew better than to argue. Preaching to the choir anyway, he supposed.

Besides, if Gabriel and Sandalphon could carry on the way they did without Falling, then Hell could never take Aziraphale. Goodness oozed out of every pore.

It didn’t take long for the alert to come, in the end. The victims were making their way to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton with haste, it said, and two seconds later so too were they. Crowley locked the house with a snap of his fingers, then slammed the accelerator to the floor like normal. He had to check Aziraphale’s face to see if that was ok. He wasn’t sure, given what they’d just seen. 

The angel didn’t seem to mind, but then between them they did have rather more effective senses than the average human driver.

* * *

They walked through the hospital unnoticed, peering into wards and reaching out for the familiar souls that they’d encountered on the road.

It took about half an hour of trial and error, but eventually they found her, in intensive care. She looked a lot like the baby that Aziraphale had held – they had the same face shape, the same eyes, and they shared a mass of tightly curled dark brown hair. According to her wristband she was called Adele, and she was unconscious. Her notes suggested she had severe internal bleeding and several fractures. Tubes seems to protrude from every orifice, and machines beeped an unsettling pulse.

Will a thrill of horror, Aziraphale noticed that her baby was nowhere to be seen. Of course she wasn’t – she’d been in perfect health, if bloodied from her completely non-existent wounds. Where was she? Had _he_ taken her? Was she safe with him?

A nurse approached, and with a snap of Crowley’s fingers, he stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Where’s the baby?’ the demon demanded.

‘Gone’, the nurse replied, eyes glassy. ‘Her dad picked her up.’

‘Did he leave contact details?’ Aziraphale asked.

He did, thankfully, and once the nurse moved away to check on Adele, the pair hurried away to find somewhere secluded to phone the man. Kyle Kemp. They were married.

They crouched in a cupboard full of cleaning supplies, and Crowley held his phone between them. There was barely room to move. If one of them sneezed they’d likely break the other’s nose.

‘Have you done this before?’ Crowley asked, dialling the number.

‘No’, Aziraphale admitted. 

‘Ok. Hold my hand.’

The angel took the proffered hand, and the phone rang out. 

Once, twice, three times.

Crowley held Aziraphale’s gaze steady, and before it could ring for a fourth time, hauled him down the phone line.

Even for an angel, it was a bizarre experience being dragged along in the wake of a mobile phone signal. They sped through buildings as if they were nothing, catching glimpses of lives as they went. Crowley was laughing with glee at the adrenaline and Aziraphale felt his own spirits lift, just a bit. Behind the glasses his demon’s eyes were completely yellow, the pupils wide, his face enraptured. 

They were only airborne for seconds before they rolled out the other end onto beige carpet, looking up at a leather sofa. The baby was there. Wonderful.

Aziraphale got to his feet quickly, and looked around. The baby was there alright, but what about the man?

Ah.

Kyle was there, but it seemed their appearance had come as a bit of a shock. He was unconscious beside them, the lit cigarette in his hand burning a hole in the carpet. Aziraphale rather pointedly didn’t put it out. The baby wasn’t in danger. It would only smoulder.

Kyle was built like a rugby player. He had dark wavy hair that was just starting to recede up his forehead, and he wore large rings on several of his fingers. His face, at least when unconscious, looked surprisingly kind. He was dressed simply – a plain pink t-shirt and dark grey jeans. 

The two beings that had just invaded his living room shared a look, and with a simultaneous snap of their fingers, he was no longer unconscious. Neither bothered to heal the bump that was currently forming on his head.

‘Hello Kyle’, Crowley said. He spat the man’s name like poison.

‘Tia…’ said Kyle.

Aziraphale glanced at the little girl. Tia. That was a lovely name.

‘Tia’s safe’, Aziraphale said. ‘At least from us.’

‘I’m calling the police’, Kyle said, scrambling to his feet. The trouble was, as soon as he drew himself, he found he could move no further. 

'Is this some kind of sick fucking joke?'

Crowley removed his sunglasses. 

It had the desired effect. Kyle paled, realised that no one was in the mood for joking and even managed to stay upright this time.

‘You nearly killed six people today’, Aziraphale told him. He could feel himself getting angry and, taking his cue from Crowley, let Kyle see a few more of his own eyes. His voice deepened involuntarily, and a glow started to build around him. 

‘I – I didn’t –’

‘You did’, Aziraphale assured him. ‘Why’s Adele so afraid of you?’

'She's so full of _shit_ ', Kyle snarled, anger overriding fear. 'I've done _nothing_ , nothing she wasn't asking for. And that good-for-nothing bitch nearly killed my kid today - tells you everything, doesn't it?'

The glow around Aziraphale throbbed and crackled.

Kyle stammered, his rant trailing off. If he could have moved he would have flattened himself against the nearest wall, or possibly launched himself from the window. Aziraphale’s light was creeping closer and closer, and sweat poured from him as he cowered in terror.

‘You will never touch her again’, the angel commanded. Kyle nodded furiously. ‘You will leave this place, now, and you will not contact her again. You will never contact your daughter. When Adele wakes up, she will find the strength to report you, and given the _considerable_ evidence that the police will find against you, you will go to prison. You won’t enjoy it.’

The light had reached Kyle’s toes and suddenly he found he could move again. He didn’t stop to think, didn't shoot his daughter a second glance, just bolted as fast as he could, leaving Tia, Aziraphale and Crowley alone in his flat.

The angel exhaled.

He cleared his throat, blinked his twenty visible eyes, and went back to looking human. 

‘Well he was rather unpleasant’, he said, smiling weakly at Crowley. 

The smile didn’t reach his eyes, and Crowley folded him into a too-tight hug.

‘It’s ok, angel’, he said. 

It wasn’t then, but it would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know any and all thoughts in the comments :)


	3. Morbid curiosity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took me a little while, folks. You'd think working from home in COVID-19 lockdown would give me more time, but apparently not. I hope you're all keeping safe and healthy.

That night the room was suffocating, as if ash hung in the air. 

Crowley sat propped against their headboard, phone in one hand and Aziraphale’s face in the other. He stroked his cheek gently with his thumb, over and over, as the angel stared absently at the ceiling, head resting in his lap.

For the past hour he had been shifting every ten minutes or so, as if he was getting ready to say something. Then he’d let out a tiny, barely perceptible sigh, and nestle in closer to Crowley. Time would pass, and he’d move again.

Crowley stayed silent. He knew better than to push. If Aziraphale had something to share, he would share it.

And, like clockwork – as they entered hour two and just as Crowley was getting properly engrossed in the comments section of a particularly horrendous r/TIFU post – Aziraphale shifted, this time with conviction. 

‘I’m not sure I went far enough’, he said.

Crowley looked down at him. 

‘He’s unlikely to get more than ten years’, Aziraphale added, making eye contact.

‘So fix it.’

‘I don’t know.’

Crowley sighed.

‘Ten years will still ruin his life, and she can probably get a restraining order when he’s out, angel’, he said. ‘Not that she actually needs one, thanks to you.’

‘Yes’, Aziraphale said, his voice as absent as his eyes. ‘Her protection is the most important thing.’

Silence fell. Then:

‘Arguably I’ve gone too far already.’

‘Angel –’

‘Heaven would be _furious_. Not that that matters but, really, an angel’s job is to encourage humans in the right direction, not actively interfere with the Great Plan.’

He paled.

‘Oh God’, he said.

Crowley wasn’t sure whether he was blaspheming or praying, and in any case, he couldn’t get another sensible word out of the angel that night. 

He turned out the light with a snap of his fingers and held the ridiculous creature he shared a cottage with tightly against him, letting him mutter his muddled thoughts into his chest, and humming soft reassurances as his murmurings became incoherent with sleep.

Crowley purposefully stayed awake that night and, unless he was mistaken, the angel nestled against his body didn’t sleep much either. Not that he ever did, but usually he’d snooze for a while, then sneak away to read, and only slip back under the covers as dawn broke. That night he stayed, but he was restless. 

By morning, the air almost felt clear again, and Aziraphale chatted happily over breakfast about inane topics in the papers. Crowley couldn’t quite shake his lingering concern, but the angel appeared chipper, so he pushed his own worries to the back of his mind.

* * *

The nights were starting to draw in then, but not so much so that Aziraphale and Crowley had abandoned their evening strolls through the hills. Particularly not that day: it was a beautiful autumn afternoon. The light crested the hills with gold, and their breath rose in wispy clouds above them. They walked hand-in-hand, talking about nothing in particular, walking in no direction in particular, leaves crunching beneath their wildly inappropriate footwear. They meandered lazily. There was no one else around, but if there had been, they would have heard the excited chatter of an angel interspersed with adoring demonic drawls as the couple approached.

When they reached the summit of whatever hill it was they’d happened to ascend that evening, the pair took a moment to drink in the view. Their little cottage was still just visible in the valley behind them, a tiny square set into the landscape. Lush green hills were turning gold and brown now. Patchwork farms stretched into the distance, and little yellow combines sat atop a few.

Aziraphale filled his lungs with cool autumn air, and let it out with a contented sigh. Crowley’s hand was warm and soft in his, and he happily let his demon drop a kiss on top of his head as he rested it against his shoulder.

‘Do you think we’ll ever want to leave?’ he asked, gazing into the distance, where pink and orange clouds melted beneath the horizon.

‘It’s not bad, is it?’ Crowley said. 

They stood there for a while, watching the sun sink downwards and the shadows around them grow longer, leaning into each other. 

Then Aziraphale stiffened.

‘Angel…’ Crowley whined. He was unwilling to let go just yet and had a very good guess as to what was about to happen. ‘Do you have to do that, while we’re –’

‘I can’t help it.’

Incredulous and resigned, Crowley unwound himself from their embrace, and looked his angel in the eyes. 

‘You can’t help it?’

‘Crowley…’

‘You seem to have been able to help it for the last – ooh – six thousand years? I don’t remember you being much of an ethereal disaster radar in Rome.’

‘Crowley!’

The angel glared, and Crowley shut up, still feeling more than a little resentful.

‘I wasn’t really… using any kind of free will when it came to doing good then’, Aziraphale explained. His glare softened into infuriating patience – or it would have been infuriating if that timbre of his voice didn’t melt Crowley completely. ‘I just did as I was told and used what free will I had to make my own life a little more enjoyable.’

He flushed at this admission, and Crowley grinned in spite of himself. He let Aziraphale begin to lead him down the mountain by the hand. 

‘But now – now I have everything I could ever want for myself. And it’s just not _right_ for me to not do anything to help the world just because Heaven isn’t telling me to. So my mind wanders. I am sorry to interrupt our walks though.’

They continued their descent in companionable silence. Crowley couldn’t be angry, not even a little bit. 

‘What’s the disaster this time, then, angel?’

‘Another accident – quite a few miles down the road, actually. I thought I’d fly.’

Crowley smiled, and sprung immediately upwards, his wings unfurling as he rose, hoisting a very surprised angel up from the ground too.

* * *

‘A few miles down the road’, it transpired, meant fifty. Their wings made short work of the distance, but nonetheless both of them quickly began to miss the Bentley as they sped through descending mist. It was cold, and water droplets ran like ice rivers over their skin and wings (although it slid off the latter much like it would have slid off a duck).

The scene of the crash was oddly muted. The details were blurred by the mist, and just a single police car and a single ambulance attended. The car had spun off the road and hit a tree, and just a few metres away other motorists sped past as if nothing had happened. The road wasn’t closed. Destruction and mundanity, side by side.

The police officer and paramedic stood beside the wreck in sombre conversation.

Aziraphale and Crowley approached. The angel felt hopefully inside the car for signs of life, but there were none. It was as if colour had been drained from that little stretch of road – dull grey woods and dust-coloured grass, the white lights of passing cars, and the resigned flicker of the two emergency service workers.

‘Ah’, he said. He paused. ‘Nothing to be done.’

Crowley swallowed. 

‘Do you want me to…?’ he asked.

‘No’, Aziraphale said. ‘Shouldn’t make a habit of it.’

The dampness from the mist now soaked their clothes and hair, but neither moved, just looked on as the two people in front of them spoke. They could have listened, if they’d wanted, but it seemed neither appropriate nor useful, so they didn’t. 

‘There were kids… in the back’, Crowley said, after a while.

‘Yes.’

‘The road’s not wet.’

They shared a glance.

‘Ah’, Aziraphale said again. ‘You know, Crowley, it doesn’t matter, but –’

‘Morbid curiosity?’ 

‘Not exactly how I’d word it, but –’

Silently, unseen, they moved towards the car. As before, Crowley averted his eyes, unwilling to witness the broken bodies strapped uselessly into their metallic coffin, but Aziraphale ploughed determinedly forwards. He stooped beside the driver’s seat. 

He could see it was a woman, 40-something with poker-straight black hair. One side of her face was barely recognisable as a human face after its impact with the tree.

Crowley had to fully turn around as Aziraphale, lips moving in prayer, reached out one finger to take a small sample of blood and touch it to his tongue. The demon’s stomach swirled unpleasantly, his imagination doing him no favours, and it struck him, not for the first time, that this was the sort of thing that a self-respecting demon should relish, not blanch at the sight of. Still, own side and all that. Suffering was scorched into his very being, and if he could run from himself too, he would.

A warm hand in the small of his back heralded the angel’s return. Aziraphale did look a little pale too, and his expression was grim.

‘You were right’, he said.

Crowley let air rush out from between his teeth.

‘Bad?’

‘Miles over the legal limit. She’d have been having trouble seeing, her reaction times would have been appalling, she –’

‘With _kids_ in the back?’

‘It seems so.’

They walked away along the verge for a little while until one of them remembered that home wasn’t within walking distance and, with a flash of black and white feathers, they were gone. 

The motorists speeding past never knew they were there, although the little girl who found two perfect feathers the next day when her mother pulled over to let her have a wee, was absolutely delighted.

* * *

Aziraphale was fretful for the rest of the evening. He wasn’t sure how he could fix this one. The driver was dead, and although he was sure she was currently enjoying one of the nastier circles of Hell – where she would have plenty of time to reflect on her actions – it wasn’t quite the same. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. The whole point was to save the innocent and aggressively encourage the guilty to never repeat their offence. She never got the chance to learn. Her children got even less.

‘Do you think it would be inherently bad to target a whole group with a miracle?’ Aziraphale asked after a while, slowly looking over at Crowley as a half-idea formed in his mind. 

The demon was curled in an armchair, reading a book and looking thoroughly displeased about it.

‘Dunno.’

‘What if everyone who’s ever driven drunk starts to have a _slightly_ worse life?’

‘Angel…’ Crowley said, and for a moment Aziraphale thought he was going to tell him off, to tell him to stop being so emotionally invested and to just make some more cocoa and go to bed.

‘What kind of “worse”?’ Crowley asked instead.

‘I thought you could help with that’, Aziraphale admitted, smiling for the first time since they’d looked out into the sunset. ‘Originally I wanted to make it impossible, but that does, unfortunately, rather interfere with free will.’

So they brainstormed.

Or, rather, Crowley brainstormed. He got a bit too excited about it – he miracled up both a flipchart and, at one point, a 3D printer. Aziraphale mainly nodded enthusiastically, except for one idea, which he flushed scarlet at and grimaced. That one got thrown out.

Still, eventually, they settled on a punishment that both of them could agree on.

And so it was that from that day on, drunk drivers all over the world were plagued with hideous nightmares, unimaginable hangovers and the kind of romantic fortune that would have made Oedipus’s relationships look uncomplicated.

Crowley was suddenly very much on board with his angel’s do-gooding.


	4. The visitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a nice little fluffy in-between chapter to brighten your self-isolating days. There is a little smut in here, so if that's not your jam, then feel free to skip over it. It's not a big or important part of the chapter, so you can probably scroll past pretty easily and still read the rest. Enjoy!

Belle didn’t know which she liked best: sleeping or eating. Perhaps it was both: curled up, half-asleep and warm, with food nearby, ready if she got peckish. In any case, her preferred lifestyle was easy to come by, at least for her. She had the kind of effortless charm that aspiring socialites would kill for. Everyone she met she had wrapped around her little finger in minutes, and they would pour adoration onto her from that moment on. 

She lived semi-nomadically, settling somewhere for a year or two, and then moving on again on a whim, leaving bewildered heartbreak in her wake. She didn’t mean to. It wasn’t that she ever disliked the places she made her home – quite the opposite – it was just that being stationary meant that she was missing out on something she’d not experienced yet. There were always new hearths to settle in front of, and new people to love her.

She’d been restless for months now. Her current lodgings were comfortable, and she was even fond of the children, but she’d felt a pull towards a mysterious elsewhere ever since that day.

It was still dark when she slipped out of her cat flap for the last time. The grass was dewy already, and in the light of the moon the daffodils and bluebells stood out, almost fluorescent against the muted grey of the late-night garden.

As the sun began to poke its head above the horizon, Belle had no idea how long the journey would take. She simply padded onwards, drawn by that ineffable pull.

* * *

Three days passed, and Crowley was gardening again. The worst of the frost seemed to be over, and in celebration he had embarked on a mammoth vegetable-planting exercise. He’d dug up the whole garden into military-straight planting troughs, and now he was shuffling along with packets upon packets of seed, sowing and watering. As he muttered obscene threats under his breath, Aziraphale’s voice bubbled through the morning air, in fits of ecstasy at the mere thought of home-grown ratatouille, roast dinners, stews and soups.

On top of his enthusing duties, the angel was also supposedly labelling the new crops, but as he got more and more excited about the culinary possibilities, his handwriting got increasingly loopy and illegible, and Crowley added rewriting the labels to his list of tasks with a half-exasperated, half-adoring smile. He shuffled along a little slower, discarding the angel’s illegible scribbles with a snap of his fingers – his littering days were over – and instead marking each plot with his own narrow scrawl.

Last summer’s re-landscaping had gone well, he thought, but was really more suited to the non-edible garden Crowley had had in mind then. The demon wondered whether he should redo it again in the autumn, but mused that if he did, he’d likely have the same conundrum again, sooner or later. Plus, he quite liked all the intricate levels, even if it currently was all bare earth.

He was also delighted to see his angel’s face light up at the prospect of fresh produce, he thought, as they made their way around the garden, joking inanely, hour after hour. Aziraphale was always unfailingly cheerful, but the something behind his eyes that had so concerned Crowley before had never really faded. He had hoped that their continued, if mildly ridiculous, escapades to save the unluckiest of humanity might eventually erase that darkness, but it remained. He felt stupid, like he should know the answer. But Aziraphale didn’t want to talk about it, and so they didn’t. 

Crowley pushed those thoughts down hard, and tuned back into the angel’s happy babble.

‘… really the base of a startling number of dishes, so we need to make sure we’ve got plenty. I’m more than happy to head back to the garden centre. I suppose I could just miracle them up – but it defeats the point, doesn’t it? You could miracle up full-grown plants, but you don’t, because it’s not the point.’

The angel paused. Starting from the furthest point in the garden, they had now reached the back wall of the house, where Crowley had lined up a winding path of grow-bags, into which he had just planted about fifty baby tomato plants. 

It wasn’t quite the right time of year for them, but Crowley would be damned if his plants were going to be so pathetic as to be influenced by the _seasons_.

‘Crowley?’

‘Mmm?’

‘ _Do_ you think we’ve got enough tomatoes?’

‘We’d better’, Crowley answered, half to Aziraphale, but mostly to the seedlings, a clear threat.

They gave an obligatory tremor, and Crowley withdrew his gaze. He smiled.

‘We’ll be fine, angel’, he said.

Aziraphale smiled again too, and kissed him sweetly on the mouth. 

Crowley wasn’t sure quite what possessed him then – perhaps it was the fresh air, or Aziraphale’s joy, or perhaps it was some good old-fashioned Hell-sponsored lust – but he found himself chucking his trowel down and grabbing his angel by the waist. Aziraphale stumbled a little and made a surprised little grunt at the demon’s frankly unnecessary enthusiasm about what was, initially, a very chaste kiss, but he couldn’t resist. He could never resist. He leaned into the embrace eagerly, cupped Crowley’s head in his hands and pulled him closer too, until the pair of them bumped gently against the wall, Aziraphale’s head leant against the bare brick. 

Since they’d moved in together, Crowley had noticed, Aziraphale had got even softer than he was before. He had surrendered completely, until his physical form embodied warmth and pleasure and hedonism. Crowley might have been the original tempter, but he couldn’t imagine a temptation greater than being pressed into the soft belly of an angel as said angel kissed his lips and face and neck, his breath coming out in short gasps against his skin.

‘Crowley’, he murmured, resting their foreheads together.

‘You’re right’, Crowley said, stealing another kiss and, not-so-subtly, dropping both hands from Aziraphale’s waist to grab his arse instead, drawing a disgruntled, breathless squeak. ‘I couldn’t give a fuck about what some random walker thinks either.’

The angel gave an unconvincing token protest, but it turned out he really couldn’t either, although the six walkers and four dogs who went past in the following hour and a half definitely did care, and would have all paid good money to expunge the following images from their brains:

1\. What looked like a huge, fully naked satanic bird touching itself, while a fully dressed, very respectable looking chap ran his mouth and hands over its wings;  
2\. A tall and striking red-headed man giving head to his partner – shorter, paler, rounder – who, disconcertingly, watched him do it with 60 pairs of floating eyes, all wide;  
3\. What might have been a slightly middle-aged cherub, apparently being murdered by a massive snake, and loving every second of it;  
4\. Said cherub bent over with the fiery-haired man’s tongue between his legs, swearing like a sailor and babbling about forks (Karen had found herself transfixed for several seconds before she remembered she was in public and strode away, embarrassed despite the fact the path was deserted. Ok, maybe Karen didn’t mind the mental image);  
5\. A strange, fiery haze in the air that was inexplicably sexual;  
6\. Some good old-fashioned fornication against a tree.

Dan, a bartender from down the road, was the only local who hadn’t realised they were a couple, and this wasn’t really the way he’d have chosen to find out. However, in their defence, they did have an – admittedly very ineffective – hedge, and it is rude to look into people’s gardens when they’re busy having sex in them.

So, five people and four dogs were left with mental images they’d rather forget, and the creators of said images lay under a miracled-up tartan blanket next to the new tomato plants. Aziraphale was curled into Crowley’s side, his head resting on his chest, cheeks pink and hair ruffled. Crowley was nuzzling his messy curls. It was quiet, except for the wind rushing through the trees. A picture of quiet bliss.

‘You know, Crowley –? ’, the angel said, after a while. 

‘You’re not going to try calling me nice again, are you?’

Aziraphale smiled.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it’, he said. ‘I’ve just been thinking.’

‘Sounds dangerous.’

‘I don’t understand something’, he said. ‘And I don’t like that.’

Crowley said nothing, but he paused in his head-nuzzling to focus on Aziraphale’s face. The angel’s expression had changed. He was still happy, still flushed and practically edible, but it was tinged with something else. Something more serious.

‘Tormenting someone you love…’ 

His voice trailed off, and Crowley felt something jolt inside him. Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this.

‘You know, I think he did love her, possibly. Or he thought he did, or did once.’ 

Crowley held his breath, listening and worrying.

‘Who came up with that one? Abuse, I mean?’ 

‘It doesn’t matter’, Crowley said. ‘Not anymore.’

‘It does to me’, Aziraphale whispered.

The atmosphere shifted. The angel felt misunderstood, the demon accused, and although they were too comfortable to move, the embrace had lost its lazy ease.

‘Hell didn’t meddle much with love’, Crowley said. ‘Wasn’t well understood. Torment though… we could get behind that.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Aziraphale said. Then: ‘Heaven knew _everything_ about love.’

Crowley suddenly realised the accusation wasn’t directed at him.

‘Not that side of it’, he said. ‘Your lot were all about the harps and the sickly little love notes and the epic sacrifices.’

‘Were we?’

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale tight.

‘ _Yes_ ’, he said emphatically, with conviction he didn’t feel. ‘The other stuff has got Hell written all over it.’

* * *

As dinnertime loomed, Aziraphale untangled himself from his partner (lover? _boyfriend_? – they’d never really discussed the semantics), collected his discarded clothing and made to head to the shop. They’d been frequenting that charming public house just down the road recently – surprisingly, the food was excellent – but they were going to try making denningvleis at home tonight, as Aziraphale had found the perfect red wine to pair with it at the back of the cellar last week.

Also, they were out of milk. 

However, when he opened the front door, he was surprised to see that they had a visitor.

‘Crowley!’ he called.

He gazed in astonishment at the little black and white cat sitting primly on his front mat, and his eyes widened further as she let herself in, and began grooming in the hallway.

‘Crowley!’ he repeated, more urgently, and the demon appeared beside him.

‘What’s up?’

‘Look!’

Crowley joined Aziraphale in staring at the cat.

‘A cat’, he said.

‘ _The_ cat.’

They exchanged a look.

‘Oh no’, Crowley said, with significantly more conviction than when he’d been trying to reassure Aziraphale earlier. ‘ _No_. No no no.’

* * *

Belle settled in fast, and within a week, it was like she’d been there for years. Crowley had tried to guilt Aziraphale into returning her to her owners, but Aziraphale had only reminded him rather severely that she’d walked nearly eight miles to find them, not to mention the fact that, if it were not for them, she would have been dead months ago.

After that, he took to slithering around the house in snake form in an attempt to scare her, but it backfired, as she seemed to prefer him as a snake. When he fell asleep in the sun three days after her arrival, he awoke to find her asleep in the coils of his body. After that, they slept in the sun together every afternoon, and Crowley forgot all about trying to oust her from the house. 

Then, exactly one week after she’d moved in, he noticed Aziraphale eyeing them jealously while pretending to read a book.

‘What?’ Crowley asked, popping back into human form and smirking. Belle hissed, and stalked away.

‘Oh, nothing’, said Aziraphale.

‘Could you possibly be jealous that our pet cat is getting all my snakey cuddles?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Jealous of the cat _you_ insisted we keep’, Crowley went on. ‘Dear me, angel.’

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes.

‘You didn’t even want to keep her!’ Aziraphale blurted.

‘Don’t you think it's a bit childish?’

‘I think _you’re_ a bit childish.’

Crowley grinned.

‘Admit you’re jealous’, he demanded. ‘Go on. You can’t lie, you’re an _angel_. A great deal holier-than-me, remember?’

Aziraphale actually pouted.

‘ _Fine_ ’, he said. ‘ _Fine_. But to be fair, I had to wait thousands of years for this, and she’s known you a week! And’ – he blushed, and mumbled the last part of the sentence in the direction of his shoes – ‘you don’t pay me as much attention now’.

If the situation had been slightly different, Crowley might have laughed, but he didn’t. His angel was feeling genuinely left out, and it was as sweet as it was completely ridiculous. Belle was a lovely source of warmth, and moderately entertaining, but she wasn’t _Aziraphale_. 

‘Forgive me, angel?’

Aziraphale smiled.

‘Always’, he said. 

They spent that afternoon in Aziraphale’s armchair, Crowley coiled securely around him. As night fell, Belle rejoined them, and Aziraphale was delighted when she fell asleep in his lap. Snake and angel and stray cat drifted off together, and stayed there until morning.


	5. Brighton pier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to [Llereurol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llereurol) for beta-ing this chapter (and the two before it!). Sorry it's taken me so long to acknowledge you :(
> 
> Hope you enjoy this chapter, and please remember that comments are basically my lifeblood.

It was 3am and, as usual, Aziraphale was downstairs in his study. Crowley had nodded off hours ago, and after holding him for a while, Aziraphale had carefully disentangled himself and headed downstairs, dropping the lightest of kisses on Crowley’s forehead as he went.

Usually he’d take this time to read. One could never read enough, and humans were churning out books at an ever-more overwhelming speed. Of course, much new material was not worth his time in the slightest, but, unlike many of his human rare-bookseller counterparts, he was careful not to sneer at modern works outright. Shakespeare, after all, had never been on the school syllabus in his own time, and Aziraphale had spent many a happy hour watching the Twelfth Night actors getting pelted with fruit. Not that it had been deserved, but that wasn’t the point. There were Shakespeares and Wildes and Woolfs walking the earth at this very moment, getting overlooked because their genius hadn’t yet been validated by a solemn professor. Perhaps even the very people who would later canonise contemporary works were now dismissing it as dreary prattle.

However, on that particular night, Aziraphale couldn’t settle on a book. He’d tried fiction, some of his more accurate history reference books and even one of his beloved books of prophecy (which he felt sat between the two categories). Nothing stuck. He felt like he was drifting these days, and never so much as when he crept downstairs alone, when Crowley wasn’t there to fill the space and silence.

He’d enjoyed having a purpose, he could admit that. Whatever niggling doubts he might have accumulated over the years about the people giving the orders, he’d liked knowing what he was meant to do next. Now he was just floating rapidly downstream, bouncing off roots and stones, with no one to steer him through nature’s current.

Flinging down a book on Ancient Greece, he instead turned to his computer, switched it on. He was going to create himself a purpose.

That was where an astonished Crowley found him eight hours later. He was astonished for two reasons. First, he’d never been convinced that Aziraphale’s computer still worked: he’d never seen it used, and it looked like it had been recently hauled out of a Stone Age archaeological dig. He had strongly suspected that no modern program would function on it, even with divine intervention. Second, Aziraphale was using Google Sheets, and Crowley would have bet several of his limbs that the angel didn’t know it existed.

‘Look’, Aziraphale said cheerfully, pointing at his screen. ‘I’ve shared the spreadsheet with you, so you can see our itinerary, or add to it, if you like.’

Crowley wondered if he might be still asleep or, possibly, if he’d fallen into some kind of alternate reality.

‘Ngk’, he said. 

‘No need to be intimidated’, Aziraphale went on, still smiling. ‘It’s really quite intuitive once you get the hang of it.’

‘What is it?’ Crowley managed to ask, trying to rearrange his brain to understand a world where Aziraphale – the same Aziraphale who couldn’t work Crowley’s old fridge because it was too ‘high tech’ – knew how to share a spreadsheet online. 

‘Ah’, said the angel. ‘Yes. Well, I’ve been downloading data from various local police forces – not to mention a couple a bit further afield – and I’ve sorted the worst offences from the past month into this spreadsheet, so that we can go and give the perpetrators a nasty little shock. Plus, I’ve got several alerts set up, so that we can continue responding to urgent matters. Can you set it up so they’re forwarded to your telephone?’

Crowley gaped.

‘I’ve been thinking that I need to befriend some local emergency services workers too’, he mused, unperturbed by Crowley’s inability to speak. ‘Maybe a journalist or two. Would you like a tea?’

‘Yuh’, Crowley croaked.

‘Wonderful.’

Aziraphale lifted himself from his chair, kissed Crowley’s cheek, and left to busy himself with the kettle. Crowley shook his head in disbelief, and dropped into the just-vacated seat.

Aziraphale wasn’t joking. Not only had he created a very detailed spreadsheet, but he’d also shared it with Crowley’s correct email address (anthonyj666@hotmail.co.uk). There was a column for ‘suggested retribution’ (Aziraphale’s wording), one with the exact latitude and longitude of the crime’s location, as well as, bizarrely, contact details. What were they going to do? Spam criminals to death? 

Crowley had a thought, and with a grin he started typing a suggested retribution.

‘Crowley!’ chided Aziraphale, sticking his head through the door as the kettle bubbled in the background. ‘Don’t change it when you’re logged in as me. Then we won’t have an accurate picture of who wrote what.’

Crowley snapped his fingers, and he was logged in as himself.

‘Happy?’ he asked, smirking.

‘Overjoyed’, Aziraphale shot back. ‘Oh, I like that. You’ve got to specify that it goes into their main inbox, though.’

Spam had never been sexier.

* * *

Standing on a chilly pier was less sexy. The wooden slats creaked beneath their feet as they strode along it. Wind tugged at their hair, and at the peeling white paint on the railings and buildings.

They were waiting for Maud Jeffries. She worked at the Food Court in the day, although not for much longer. She was on court bail, charged with a series of serious scams that had left several pensioners bereft of money. Her trial wasn’t for another few months, but she’d still had to surrender her passport, and was reporting to Brighton Police Station every Wednesday.

At least, that's what Aziraphale had read in the local paper.

Sometimes, a case like hers might have been defensible, at least morally. Plenty of down-and-out folk got caught up in illegal schemes in a desperate attempt not to starve to death, and although Aziraphale couldn’t ever condone theft – Thou Shalt Not Steal, after all – if it was a Robin Hood-esque endeavour, he could live with pursing his lips and looking the other way. Not that he’d liked the real Robin Hood in the slightest. Crowley had really hit the nail on the head when he called him a ‘smug bastard’ and Aziraphale had been beside himself with glee when he’d promptly seduced Maid Marion, and got every single member of Robin’s little gang drunk the night before a big job. He suspected Crowley wouldn’t have been so successful with the former endeavour if Marion herself hadn’t also been finding Robin’s constant self-congratulation rather wearing. 

That wasn’t the point. The point was that Maud’s crimes couldn’t be explained away so easily. She didn’t just work at the Food Court – she owned it. She paid her staff poorly, and she treated her teenage son with vague indifference whenever she was at home (which wasn’t often). The scam was a side hustle, and one she kept going by befriending her victims first (Aziraphale hadn't read _that_ in the paper - that information he'd obtained through other channels). All that, and she couldn’t even muster anguish as she sat in her allocation hearing, and listened to the magistrates mandating a jury trial. 

Today, she was going to experience something that should make her sit up.

They saw her coming from their not-so-casual vantage point beside the Food Court bins. Tight ponytail, and a round, inviting face ruined by a harsh frown. Leggings and a hoodie, and a bundled apron under her arm.

She was heading straight for the front door of her business, just like every morning. However, on that particular day, instead of jamming the keys in the lock and switching on all the lights, she found herself very suddenly changing her mind and veering past the building instead. If she’d been watching herself, she would have thought it odd, but as she wasn’t, and couldn’t, she didn’t. 

Two occult beings grinned, and swivelled in perfect unison to watch as she passed. Then they followed.

She strolled past the rides, garish against the muted sky, and in a bizarrely business-like fashion, went to peer over the railings.

What happened next had caused quite a few arguments in the Crowley-Fell household, because it required one of them to send her spinning to her doom and one of them to save her.

One of these tasks was clearly more fun.

Although more the saving type, Aziraphale had felt it unfair that he – the one who had identified the woman and come up with her punishment in the first place, should be left to do the boring part. Crowley had correctly pointed out that he was a demon, and that demons didn’t usually save the people they chucked into the sea. He had then incorrectly claimed that saving people was against his nature. (‘Would you really trust a demon to stop her from falling?’) The answer was, of course, yes, at least this particular demon. However, this particular demon was also about as annoying as he was not-evil, and Aziraphale had relented.

Their scheme was helped by Maud’s natural feeling of being indestructible. She was leaning far too far over the railing, and Crowley only had to give the tiniest helping hand to the wind to send her toppling towards the sea. He had to admit that seeing her grubby trainers disappearing over the edge gave him a little jolt of pleasure. And then he folded his arms gleefully, and watched Aziraphale.

The saving part was not only more boring, it was also more difficult. It required good timing to be believable. If Maud suspected divine intervention she would be buoyed further, and this was supposed to do the opposite.

Crowley sent her flying, and Aziraphale reacted. She flailed instinctively, hands desperate for something to grab. But the angle was wrong, and she was too far from the pier. In a split second, the angel made a decision, and the pier was suddenly about a metre wider than it had been before. 

This had two effects. Maud, about to plunge to a very watery death, managed to grab onto something solid and save herself. However, aforementioned ‘something solid’ – the brand-new edge of the pier – also broke her nose.

The angel and demon exchanged a satisfied smile, and Aziraphale let out a long breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

‘How long should we leave her?’ Crowley asked, listening to her terrified screams from their viewpoint a few feet away.

Aziraphale considered for a moment.

‘Let her hang there for a minute’, he said. ‘She’s relatively fit, and with the adrenaline on top, she won’t fall.’

* * *

They rescued her eventually, sticking their heads through the railings with expressions of carefully curated horror. Beneath her, violent storm-grey waves broke into angry white froth against the pier. They grabbed an arm each, and hauled her to safety, where she lay, breathing heavily, her nose bleeding gently into the wood.

They helped her sit up, and Aziraphale went to get her a glass of water.

As soon as he was gone, Crowley dropped the concerned bystander act. He’d seen Mauds before. He’d _made_ Mauds before. Slowly, he removed his sunglasses, and looked her in the eye. Maud’s own eyes widened in response, but she was still too shaken to say anything.

‘Listen to me very carefully’, he said. ‘Unless you work very hard to rebuild the lives you destroyed, unless you can muster up some remorse and unless you can manage to care about anyone other than yourself, then you’re going to find yourself tumbling off another _very_ high building, and I can assure you that no one will be there to help you.’

He paused. The woman seemed to be recovering from the shock, and as she did, her eyes started to wander over his corporation, his necklaces and skin-tight jeans, and her lips distorted down into a sneer. Her wide eyes were narrowed now, and glassy, and he could tell she didn’t care about a word he was saying.

Without missing a beat, and without pausing in his tirade, he let the rest of his features melt into something more demonic. He couldn’t sense anyone else nearby, so he unfurled his wings too, and leered over her, monstrous and otherworldly. 

‘I’ll be watching’, he warned. 

He pressed one finger, hard and deliberate, into the bridge of her shattered nose. She whimpered.

Then footsteps announced Aziraphale’s return, and Maud was saved any further torment. The angel brought water and, inexplicably, a paramedic. 

‘I didn’t mean to break her nose’, Aziraphale said, fretfully, as they returned to the Bentley hand in hand (Maud knew better than to sneer at that, Crowley was pleased to see). ‘Maybe that was a bit much.’

‘Nah, she deserved it’, Crowley said. ‘Lunch?’

**Author's Note:**

> Praise and/or criticism is always appreciated, folks.


End file.
